Identifying your strengths (and weaknesses) – and why this is important!

You have a personal brand. It is what people say about you when you are not in the room. It helps you to separate yourself from the competition when you are job hunting and to increase your visibility when you are looking for a promotion. It also helps you to be clear about who you are and to ensure you are acting in ways that are true to the vision you have of yourself.

It is a useful exercise to think about how others might see you and how you wish to be seen. It also helps to make sure that you come across in the way that you intend. Your personal brand comprises three core elements, which are as follow.

Values

Determining your values can help you to identify what you want from your professional life. Values are different from interests - they are our core beliefs about what is right and wrong and what is important to us; they reflect the footprint we want to leave; and they say a lot about who we are as individuals. The culture we were brought up in, the way we were parented, our religion and our experiences as children and adults all have an impact on our values. They can be treated as a route map; an inner voice or guide - or conscience - that ultimately determines our behaviours and attitudes.

When we act against these values, our conscience is 'pricked'. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. It's an unpleasant feeling and is designed to prompt us to change either the belief/attitude or the behaviour so that the tension goes away. It's always worth listening to this tension, because when we behave in accordance with our values, we become more fulfilled by what we're doing.

Strengths

Strengths are different from values. Your strengths are those qualities that energise you. When you use your strengths at work or to help with your search for a job, you can be sure that you are performing at your best. When things are going well, playing to your strengths helps you to do even better. When things are more challenging, you can turn to those strengths to increase your confidence and resilience. For example, I know one of my key strengths is common sense. When times get tough, I can use this to get the best from a situation by evaluating it logically.

A useful framework of 24 work-based strengths has been developed by The Strengths Partnership. These were chosen through research to depict the 24 strengths that have the biggest impact on work performance (eg, relationship building, results focus and persuasiveness). However, there is a saying that "if you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities", and it is difficult to concentrate fully on more than three of these strengths when faced with a real-life situation.

Identifying your three standout strengths from the full list of 24 is useful to ensure that they are always at the back of your mind; choose the three that best describe you. For each of these strengths, ask yourself the following questions:

• When have I demonstrated this strength?
• How did it help me meet a difficult challenge?
• How can I stretch this strength further?

When you have identified your top three strengths, you have an instant answer to the common question, "What do we get if we employ you?" and you have a useful framework for your opening paragraph on your application form!

There is an added benefit to knowing your key strengths. One of the hardest questions to answer in an interview is, "What are your weaknesses?" Many interviewees get this wrong - either by claiming that they have no weaknesses at all (potentially arrogant and lacking in self-awareness) or by reeling off a litany of disasters about themselves (why would the recruiter employ you if you are that bad?). What recruiters are looking for is an awareness of your potential for growth and an orientation towards continuing professional development. A bit of humility doesn’t go amiss, either.

So, the trick is balance - give them enough to indicate self-awareness, but still appear employable. One way of doing this is to mention one of your key strengths, but in overdrive. Any strength overplayed can become a weakness. For example, strength in collaboration will enable you to bring people on board with your ideas, network across your organisation and source a variety of viewpoints. Overplayed, it looks like you are prone to prevarication, can’t make decisions or can’t work independently. You can talk about how you have learned to overcome it by recognising when it is happening and what you did to reduce its impact - your weakness becomes an example of your own awareness, growth and development potential.

Unique selling point

Adding your values to your strengths and key transferable skills (eg, learnt from previous jobs, studies, voluntary work or travel) help you to create your unique selling point - what it is about you that makes you special. Organisations can then see at a glance whether you will match what they are looking for. Understanding your values, strengths and what you bring to the table means that you are better able to sell them - and help you to get that job!

Peter Storr is a chartered organisational psychologist. His new book, Get that Job, is published by HarperCollins in its new 7 Simple Steps series.